Quotes About Literature

I was 8 years old when I went across the street from my house to a fair, and they always had a used book sale. For a quarter I bought a book called 'Come On Seabiscuit.' I loved that book. It stayed with me all those years.

It alarms me to think of all that I have read and how little of it has stayed with me.

'The Danish Girl' was published in 2000. Then it, too, would disappear, as most books do. It fell out of print almost everywhere. I wrote other books and, as an editor, worked on dozens more. Yet always, Lili stayed with me.

I was an introvert really. I spent a lot of time in the crib reading books. Staying out of trouble.

Literature speaks with everyone individually - it is personal property that stays inside our heads. And nothing speaks to us as forcefully as a book, which expects nothing in return other than that we think and feel.

I was a 'reverence for life' man - 'see life steadily and see it whole' - in my days as a lecturer in English lit. We are, I argued, if not exactly 'saved' by reading, at least partially 'repaired' by it: made the better morally and existentially.

As publishers focus on blockbusters, they steadily lose interest in little-known authors from other countries.

I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.

Blake is damned good to steal from.

I feel able to steal from Emily Dickinson because she's both wonderful and dead.

All writers steal. You might as well steal from the best.

I used to steal from the library, which is a crime and it's bad, but I just couldn't get enough books, and I also didn't like to give them back once I'd read them. I just read everything.

It's so funny, I'm always stealing from Moliere, and nobody ever notices. I steal from him willy-nilly.

At 17, I went to an engineering college, the entire reading was about fluid mechanics and steam engines and what not, so I drifted from arts, literature and even cinema, because in Aligarh there were a limited number of theatres.

I steer clear of any novel that gets billed as a 'meditation.'

My enthusiasm for L.A. stems from my father, who was a lecturer in American literature at the University of Birmingham. Through his work, our family did several house swaps with L.A. families. It was a dreadfully daring thing to do in the early 1980s; there was no Internet, so you had no idea of what you were getting into.

The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.

I often think of the different ways Goethe and Darwin got at evolution. Goethe had the poetic conception of it all right; Darwin worked it out step by step. Who's ahead? And which has any business scoffing at the other?

The short story, it's not a step on the way to becoming a novelist.

Stephen King in many respects is a wonderful writer. He has made a contribution. People in the future will be able to pick up Stephen King's books and learn a lot about who we were by reading those books.

I think Judy Blume, Stephen King, and Dean Koontz are the three authors responsible for my being where I am today. I owe them a lot.

My first six books were horror, I think because when I was young I loved Stephen King. John Wyndham, Daphne Du Maurier, and it's natural to try and emulate the books you first loved.

I grew up reading Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Robert McCammon, Isaac Asimov's nonfiction books, and Roald Dahl.

Whatever our bedtime was as kids, we could stay up an extra half hour if we were reading. My parents didn't care as long as I was under the spell of a Stephen King or a Douglas Adams. Now I read in bed. I read at work. I read standing in line. It's like, 'Hello, my name is Nathan and I am a reader.'